partially subdued when the Dutch arrived as settlers in 1652.

The Dutch "Boers" began by purchasing land from the Hottentots and then,
as they grew more powerful, they dispossessed the dark men and tried to
enslave them. There grew up a large Dutch-Hottentot class. Indeed the
filtration of Negro blood noticeable in modern Boers accounts for much
curious history. Soon after the advent of the Dutch some of the
Hottentots, of whom there were not more than thirty or forty thousand, led
by the Korana clans, began slowly to retreat northward, followed by the
invading Dutch and fighting the Dutch, each other, and the wretched
Bushmen. In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Hottentots had
reached the great interior plain and met the on-coming outposts of the
Bantu nations.

The Bechuana, whom the Hottentots first met, were the most advanced of the
Negro tribes of Central Africa. They had crossed the Zambesi in the
fourteenth or fifteenth century; their government was a sort of feudal
system with hereditary chiefs and vassals; they were careful
agriculturists, laid out large towns with great regularity, and were the
most skilled of smiths. They used stone in building, carved on wood, and
many of them, too, were keen traders. These tribes, coming southward,
occupied the east-central part of South Africa comprising modern
Bechuanaland. Apparently they had started from the central lake country
somewhere late in the fifteenth century, and by the middle of the
eighteenth century one of their great chiefs, Tao, met the on-coming
Hottentots.

The Hottentots compelled Tao to retreat, but the mulatto Gricquas arrived
from the south, and, allying themselves with the Bechuana, stopped the
rout. The Gricquas sprang from and took their name from an old Hottentot
tribe. They were led by Kok and Barends, and by adding other elements they
became, partly through their own efforts and partly through the efforts of
the missionaries, a community of fairly well civilized people. In
Gricqualand West the mulatto Gricquas, under their chiefs Kok and
Waterboer, lived until the discovery of diamonds.

The Griquas and Bechuana tribes were thus gradually checking the
Hottentots when, in the nineteenth century, there came two new
developments: first, the English took possession of Cape Colony, and the
Dutch began to move in larger numbers toward the interior; secondly, a
newer and fiercer element of the Bantu tribes, the Zulu-Kaffirs, appear